Below, Kelly McCann demonstrates (his version of) the chin jab. McCann has done away with the "fingers to the eyes" and explains why. That's his opinion... & I am NOT advocating it. I'm simply using the video as a demonstrative in support of the article below it...
© COPYRIGHT 2008 BY BRADLEY J. STEINER - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
American Combato
Seattle Combatives
The Brilliant Chinjab Smash!
VIRTUALLY every style and system of hand-to-hand combat has, someplace in its repertoire, a blow that employs the heel of the hand. We are of course speaking now of combat systems, and we acknowledge that this type of strike has of course been eliminated — quite properly — from all sporting and competitive arts.
The great genius of William Ewart Fairbairn was multifaceted. One of his truly significant achievements in the field of close combat was the innovation of the CHINJAB — ie that blow (illustrated in ALL-IN FIGHTING, GET TOUGH!, and HANDS OFF!) in which the open hand, fingers spread, is driven straight upward and deeply back underneath the jaw with full bodyweight and upward thrusting force behind the action. End result is almost always at least a knockout. Sometimes it‘s a broken neck.
Several things can and should be acquired as bolstering or supplementary tactics, and these enable the blow to be utilized often with enhanced effect: Some of them are . . .
• Whipping the forward hand and arm (when the rearmost is used in delivering the chinjab smash) around the enemy‘s lower back. If you whip your forward left arm, then your left hand impacts sharply with your enemy‘s left kidney. If your right hand is the lead, then the right kidney is smacked. This action is done simultaneous with the chinjab‘s impact
• Grabbing the enemy‘s belt or frontal portion of his trousers with your lead hand, as your rear hand delivers the chinjab smash • Driving the vertical forearm of the chinjabbing hand smartly and sharply into the enemy‘s sternum as the chinjab lands under his jaw
• Following impact of the chinjab smash raising the elbow of the chin- jabbing arm and driving a powerful tiger‘s claw grabbing action to the enemy‘s face and eyes, then smashing him downward — on his head
This particular blow — ie the chinjab smash — did not exist prior to Fairbairn‘s innovation of it. The straight heelpalm thrust (an excellent strike, too) was the mainstay heel-of-the-hand strike, and some of the Chinese ch‘uan fa arts utilized a ―whipping and an ―overhead circular type of heelpalm blow. But Fairbairn created the chinjab!
The great thing about the chinjab blow is that it produces the most amount of destructive trauma for the action rendered. The neck muscles cannot provide protective resistance against this blow when it is properly delivered, and the enemy has no chance of even seeing it coming! It requires little strength, it cannot injure the user‘s hand, and it will cause some degree of injury even if it misses its primary target. In fact, there are numerous targets for the chinjab smash:
• The nose
• Either eye
• The temple
• The jaw hinge
• The mental foramen nerve (two inches down from the corner of the mouth — the boxer‘s ―knockout point)
• The base of the skull
• The sternum/solar plexus
• Either kidney
• The liver
• The spleen
There are some more, but you get the idea! We favor using the chinjab smash with Jack Dempsey‘s falling step — but in any case, whether or not the falling step is used — the entire body should be turned into the blow, and every effort should be given to strike with the totality of one‘s bodyweight.
Where did Fairbairn get the idea for the chinjab smash? Obviously, we can only speculate, because we have no knowledge of his ever explaining the genesis of this technique. Rex Applegate was unable to shed any light on the matter, either. We asked him many years ago.
Our opinion (and it is opinion, please note; not ―fact) is that Fairbairn‘s exposure to the internal boxing system of Pa G‘wa Ch‘uan (―The Eight Trigram Fist school of internal boxing) taught him the value of the open palm as a striking implement. Having the street fighting and ju-jutsu background that he did have, Fairbairn probably understood that the lengthy process necessary for mastering the ―internal methods was simply impractical for most men. He also knew how to hit hard (from his atemi training). He loved the ju-jutsu edge-of-the-hand strike, and probably surmised that the heel of the hand could be utilized similarly, though to different targets — delivered in an upward direction. To the best of our knowledge, Pa G‘wa Ch‘uan teaches the pupil to hold the palms open and up, but does not train them in anything like the chinjab blow. Fairbairn may well have put two and two together, and come up with what is certainly one of the most important blows in unarmed combat.
Anyway . . . that‘s our thought on the matter.
No matter how you look at it though, and you might enjoy trying to figure out what prompted the ―Deacon to create this great move, yourself, you must learn and master the chinjab smash if you aspire to effectiveness in close combat. It should become one of your primary moves — as it was one of Fairbairn‘s. Mastery of the chinjab will not, by itself, make your life secure. However, it will place one helluva dynamite weapon in your personal arsenal, and it will enable you to strike any foe viciously, powerfully, and effectively in any serious predicament.
© COPYRIGHT 2008 BY BRADLEY J. STEINER - ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Stop The Extreme Stretching
WE have had the pleasure of meeting and training numerous black belts in most styles and systems over the years. Often, those that had been trained in taekwon-do evidenced two conspicuous detrimental attributes (among others): 1. The penchant for high and fancy kicking, and 2. Serious hip and leg strains and problems (due to continual efforts to achieve and maintain the skill to do #1).
We have no comments for those readers who may be in taekwon-do and who love the art, and who have no intention of ever getting out of it. We all must pursue the paths that make the most sense to us. However, for those in taekwon-do or any similar system in which extreme stretching and flexibility is continually emphasized, and who are training because they wish to acquire hand-to-hand combat abilities for the real world, we must point out:—
a) High kicking and any fancy kicking is anathema to practicality and realism. These types of leg and foot maneuvers will almost certainly get you killed or seriously injured in any encounter with a determined and experienced violent felon.
b) Extreme stretching is extremely dangerous and detrimental to many people whose physiological propensities do not permit them much flexibility to begin with.
So, we caution those for whom our message has value: Stop training for acrobatic kicking if you are serious about personal defense and close combat. The resultant capability (assuming that you possess the genetics to achieve it) is irrelevant for self-defense, and the means by which you are struggling to acquire it may cause serious and even permanent injury to you.
Extreme stretching can harm the joints and the ligaments and tendons of the body. True enough: Some individuals appear to be naturally endowed with a greater capacity for flexibility than others, and they might not be damaged by this kind of exercising. But others may be. And we have seen an awful lot of injuries that have been the result of this kind of physical training, over the years. We ourself were once a student of an excellent style of taekwon-do (Chungdokwan), and we were never very flexible, naturally. We were fortunate, as we learned several years after leaving taekwon-do, to have abandoned the stretching and high kick work before being harmed by it. In fact, in the particular School that we attended there was (as taekwon-do schools go) only a mild emphasis on kicking to great heights and to achieving extreme flexibility; but still the effort to achieve and then to sustain the ability to kick to head height with a side thrust kick would certainly have resulted in some very painful injuries had we persisted — given our physical structure — with such practice into our 30‘s and beyond.
If you doubt the truth of that which we are saying here about the potentially detrimental effects of extreme stretching, check with a sports physician. If you doubt what we say about high kicking being dangerous in hand-to-hand combat, do as you please. (You may find out one day in the actual arena of battle — and if you survive you will start training differently from then on, and — doubtless — be less skeptical of that which we have said).
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